Bellerophon
by Morwen Tindomerel
Summary: Exclusive home of the very rich. The ultimate in luxury and full of people with problems, plots and plans. OCs but lots of familiar names and faces will appear.
1. Bellerophon

"Little Rock control this is Evening Bird, we are on final approach vector."

"We read, Evening Bird, your usual hangar is open and waiting. Welcome home Miss Alistair, Miss Meghan."

"Thanks, Zim, out."

Alistair Bracken switched off the link and refocused on her flying, Bellerophon's sky tended to be a might crowded around the floating colony what with security flitters, the limo-shuttles and sky hoppers of the residents, visiting aspirants' atmo yachts, and a constant traffic of supply and support transports. And then there were the estates themselves, huge islands in the sky, every one a carefully landscaped fantasy home for the ultra-riche.

Each estate had its own assigned co-ordinates, spaced well apart, but their size made them seem much closer together than they actually were. By day the aerial view wasn't exactly inspiring, mile after mile of looming gray shapes, but at night the estates glowed and sparkled like jeweled lamps beneath the stars. Normally the colony kept an altitude of about ten thousand feet above the glittering waters of the Great Sea but sometimes went up as high as thirty thousand to avoid dangerous weather. And all ten thousand odd floating estates made an annual migration from northern to southern hemispheres, following the sun.

Evening Bird traced a graceful parabolic arch over the main traffic plane, her plates and the polarized glass of the cockpit, salon dome and ports gleaming golden in the bright light of 'Little White' Bellerophon's sun. The seventy foot yacht was the best Hampton Enterprise's shipyards could produce; small but very fast with sleek aerodynamic lines making her highly maneuverable in atmo.

Little Rock was straight ahead but about three hundred feet down. "You're high." Meghan observed mildly, sitting quiet with hands folded in the co-pilot's chair.

"Not for long!" Alistair peeled the boat into a dive, side-slipping then pulling up sharply and expertly as they came level with the estate's docking bays.

"Show off." said her younger sister.

"Jealous!" Alistair shot back.

Meghan was only an adequate pilot, completely lacking Alistair and Seanna's touch, a fact which perturbed her not at all. "You wish!"

"Flashy, Miss Alistair, very flashy." said Little Rock Control good humoredly. "Taking over - now."

Alistair lifted her hands from the stick as the remote pilot lights came on and let Control guide them into the bay. Ground crew converged on the yacht and an auto-stair attached itself to the forward lock.

"Take care of my baby." Alistair said to the nearest mechanic as she set foot on deck.

He grinned broadly. "It'll be a pure pleasure, miss. What a little beauty!" Alistair beamed delightedly at the compliment.

The passages threading the underpinnings of the estate were narrow, metal walled and featureless. It would be very easy to get lost in the labyrinth if you didn't know it well. Meghan and Alistair did, their feet took them automatically through the bends and turns to a particular access lift that raised them twenty levels up to the service quarters of their own residence.

A housemaid, supervising laundry bots as they sorted and folded clean linens, greeted the young women with a smile.

"Hello, Emmy."

"Hi, Emms."

"Miss Meghan, Miss Alistair, nice to have you home." the woman replied.

"To make more work for you." Alistair reminded her, grinning.

Emmy laughed. "And our lives a lot more interesting."

"Thank you for putting it like that." said Meghan. "Miss Seanna home?"

"Swimming in the Grotto last I heard."

The estate was an exquisite recreation of Dianne Torres Hampton's home world. Painted Rock was a border moon that had gone back to black rock after a catastrophic planetquake. Dianne and her kid brothers had been among the few survivors found huddled in the terraforming stations by the rescue ships. Judging by the estate her husband had made for her Painted Rock had been a very beautiful world.

The living surface was all arroyos, mesas and spires of striated stone in all hues of ochre, red through gold with touches of violet. There were winding streams, falls and pools of crystal water, rock and cactus gardens in the heights and green flowering oases in the valleys. Residences and guest lodgings were excavated into the rock, all smooth and flowing as if sculpted by millenia of wind and water rather than the hand of man with windows and doors looking like cave opening and terraces balconies, and bridges looking like natural formations.

The grotto was a recreational complex between the Bracken sisters' residence and Wade and Dianne's. It had hot springs feeding cozy soaking tubs, exercise rooms, game rooms, a sauna and spa but its main feature was a vast 'underground' swimming lake beneath high domed vaults upheld by water sculpted pillars and lit by indirect sunlight falling down long chimneys.

Alistair and Meghan's youngest sister, Seanna Bracken, was splashing in a shallow part of the artificial lake with three or four other girls, bobbing in the water or resting on the sandy shore, she caught sight of them and shrieked in delight.

"Lis! Meg! You're back!" she clambered out of the water.

The other girls turned, but their eyes were on Seanna not the newcomers. "What're they wearing?" one demanded, her pinned up hair a tumble of curls in imitation of Meghan's trademark do.

Seanna stopped to survey her sisters critically. "Lis has got on a sleeveless silk crepe wrap blouse, buff gold, and tied in a bow on the side, with a chocolate brown divided skirt in raw silk and boots. Meg's wearing an a-line white linen halter dress with a wide green silk sash around the middle and silver-green sandals." little sister nodded her approval. "Not bad, not bad at all."

"So glad you're pleased." Alistair said dryly as Meghan pursed her lips in amusement.

The questioner and other girls sighed in satisfaction. "I want to talk to my sisters now." Seanna told them. "See you, tonight. End program." whereupon the four other girls vanished.

Alistair and Meghan didn't so much as blink. The colonists' privacy fetish and the super sophisticated communications equipment available to them through Hampton Enterprises' comm-tech division meant casual visiting was done entirely by holo. Each of Seanna's friends had been swimming or sunning herself on her own estate surrounded by the images of the others. And of course that's why they'd been unable to see Meghan and Alistair - the newcomers weren't part of the program.

Privacy and exclusivity were the keymarks of the floating colony, its reason for being. The ultra riche wanted to luxuriate in their private fantasy worlds but they also wanted to show them off to their social peers. Life was a constant whirl of luncheons, sporting meets, musicales, conversaziones, theatricals, receptions, dinners and dances but one never set foot on another's estate without a formal invitation.

Seanna pulled a terry robe over her fashionably tattered bathing suit before hugging her sisters, then wrapped a towel into a turban around her wet hair. They strolled through a wide, arched opening into a lush garden filled with the music of running water.

"So where is everybody?" Alistair asked.

Seanna assumed the sly grin with which she always imparted a particularly juicy bit of gossip. "Well Briony took off with Kirk last week and hasn't been heard from since."

"You're kidding." "At the start of Unification Days?" both sisters stared in surprise.

Seanna's grin broadened. "Yup. Just a reccie saying she'd be back for the Foundation Ball, no addy, no message code, nothing. Is Dianne ever mad!"

"I'll bet she is." Alistair said grimly. "Talk about thoughtless -"

"This is a hard time of year for Briony." Meghan reminded her quietly. "Lots of memories."

"What about us?" the eldest Bracken sister demanded angrily. "We lost a brother too, not to mention parents, land and our whole world!"

"But we didn't fight. That makes a difference."

Alistair was unappeased. "At least Briony was on the winning side."

Meghan shook her head somberly. "Nobody won the war. We're all still hurting from it, every one of us, in our various ways."

There was no answer to that, they all knew only too well it was true. Not just of their family but of all families, of the whole 'Verse. And everybody sought what comfort they could, which in Briony's case meant running away from it all with her lover.

"Anyway Dianne's sulking in her workroom." Seanna continued. "Jolie arrived this morning with Derrick, Oona and co. in tow and Wade flew over to talk business with her. We're slated for a family dinner tonight."

Meghan's eyebrows went up. "Including your playmates?"

Seanna shook her head. "That's after dinner. Jolie's having sixty or so of her closest friends over for an 'intimate little evening'.

"That should be interesting." Alistair said dryly. "Can't wait to see who qualifies as a 'close friend' this season."

Seanna's sly grin reappeared. "The Disgusting Object has come to spend Unification Days with his Ma."

"Must need money." Alistair said flatly.

"Oh, Lis," Little Sister cried in mock dismay, "maybe he just got an urge to be with family over the holidays."

Meghan, usually the most charitable of the sisters shook her head. "No. He needs money. Poor Aunt Paige."

"Here's to hoping she has better luck with the quints." said Alistair. She eyed Seanna suspiciously. "What else? You got canary feathers in your teeth."

"Yolanda Haymer's back." both elder girls stopped and stared and Seanna grinned broadly, well pleased by their reaction.

"When? How?"

"And where the hell has she been all this time!"

"Two weeks ago. And nobody knows. She and Durran just picked up where they left off and neither is saying a word about it."

"Good for them." said Meghan, recovering from her first shock. Then it was her turn to grin evilly. "Gossip circuit must be red hot - and overheating with frustration."

Seanna laughed. "Oh it is. You should hear the rumors fly!"

Alistair shook her head dubiously. "I dunno. If you ask me Durran's better off without that whore."

"He loves her." Meghan said quietly.

"More the fool he. She'll just stomp his heart again having none of her own."

Seanna lost her grin and looked thoughtful. "Maybe not. I've seen them both and he's happy but not besotted this time around. And she...her attitude is downright weird. All that swarmy charm is gone. She's snippy and edgy - and yet for all that deep down she's happy. It's like...like she's being forced to do something she really wants but can't admit to even to herself."

Alistair dismissed this complex analysis with a shrug. "Never understood why she left in the first place. Durran Haymer was a whore's dream, totally besotted and able to give her everything."

"Maybe more than she could handle." Meghan said softly. "What happens to a whore when she falls in love?"

Alistair opened her mouth, then closed it and looked thoughtful herself. "She gets scared. Maybe scared enough to run away from her perfect mark."

"And comes back in the end because she can't stay away?" Seanna wondered. "Durran had to have a reason for taking her back. And he can't have any illusions about her, not after what he found out while looking."

Alistair shrugged. "Well, it's his lookout. Durran Haymer's a big boy he can take care of himself."

"Sounds like Yolanda's found him more than a match for her." Meghan observed.

Alistair went up to her suite, walked through the sitting area to the bedroom. Three large captures were inset into the wall to the right of the bed: A view of the ranch from look-out point. Mama and Daddy smiling on the porch of the house, arms around each other. Big brother all spit and polish and so proud in his brand new Independents uniform. Those images, and the charm bracelet that never left her wrist, was all that was left of that life.

She touched her parents' faces gently, and then her brother's. So long ago now, eight years since the destruction of Shadow. Eight and a half since they'd said their last good-byes to Mama and Daddy and the Hands. Almost ten since Mal's last leave, the one before he got himself killed on Athens. A very long time when you were only twenty-one.

Inevitably the memories had faded. Sometimes she went for days, weeks even, without thinking of her life that was. She wasn't sure how she felt about that but no point in worrying about what you couldn't change. If you went on living - and she had no intention of stopping - the past inevitably receded farther and farther and old memories were crowded out by new.

She turned her attention to another capture, set a little way from the others. Wade and Dianne in the solarium, her talking and him not listening - typical. Alistair grinned fondly. Of course they hadn't taken Mama and Daddy's place, they knew and the girls knew nobody ever could, but the Hamptons had made themselves a place of their own in their wards' hearts and lives.

Good people for all their money, Mama and Daddy would have liked them, and looking down from heaven had to be glad their girls had fallen into such hands. Granted the beautiful estate, the clothes, the parties wouldn't have cut much ice with Maria Reynolds Bracken and Sam Bracken but they'd have valued the fine education their daughters were getting. Mama'd always been a big one for learning and even Daddy'd seen the use of it.

Alistair herself was fully alive to the advantages her second family had to offer; Hampton money and Hampton influence meant the Bracken girls could do exactly as they liked, including twisting Alliance law and Alliance government around their little fingers. The Independence cause wasn't lost yet. War hadn't worked but what was politics but war by other, less bloody, means?


	2. At Hampton Court

Meghan sat at the dressing table in her silk tented, white on white bedroom brushing her waist length curls and reading the scroll running across a side mirror.

'Miss Meghan Bracken-Hampton -'

"Note." the scroll stopped and her words appeared in red as she said; "Eliminate the Hampton. I am not a Hampton I am a Bracken. Resume."

'Miss Meghan Bracken will be the richest debutant making her bow this season. This lovely young Cinderella, born on an outer world and orphaned by the war before being adopted into the fabulously wealthy Hampton dynasty, already possesses a fortune of 20 million, 12.5 in trusts and HE stock, and a further seven or eight from endorsements and her personal line of clothing and cosmetics. She is expected to receive at least 80 million more from her adopted father now she has come of age. -'

"Note. Are all these numbers necessary? This is a puff piece not a financial report. Resume."

'Meghan will make her debut in the exclusive surroundings of the floating colony on Bellerophon. The Wade Hamptons' estate of 'Little Rock' has been her home for many years and she will have the pleasure of being surrounded by family and friends with only minimal intrusions from the outside 'Verse.'

'Such as this article." Meghan said dryly. 'No, don't make a note of that. Resume."

'Little Rock is one of the most unique homes in the colony -'

"Note. 'Most unique' is a tautology." she said acidly. "Something is 'unique' or it is not. Little Rock is unique. Resume."

'- beautifully striated genuine stone has been molded into naturalistic tunnels and caverns creating a delightfully light and airy troglodyte home in which the indoors melts almost imperceptibly into outdoors.'

'Megan shares one of the three residences on the estate with her two sisters; Alistair and Seanna. The multi-leveled 20,000 square foot home has fifteen bedrooms, twelve baths and includes amenities like a thousand book library, a multi-linked holo-suite, a sauna and an Olympic quality gymnasium in addition to the usual formal rooms, parlors, dens, recreation rooms and living rooms.

"Note. Numbers again. Are all these statistics really necessary? Resume."

'Her private apartment is one of the loveliest, most feminine rooms in the 'Verse; rich white Sihnon silk swaths the stone walls and ceiling, luminous with the light from draped windows and shafts. The floor is covered by a snowy sweep of deep velvet carpeting. The furnishings are of ivorywood shimmering with pearl inlays. The single bed and its bedside table are enclosed by a tent of gauzy white silk net, creating a room within a room. Fresh flower arrangements on almost every surface, a few cushions and throws add their notes of color to the overall effect of virginal whiteness.'

"Note: Research the possible market for a line in furniture and textiles." said Meghan. "Resume."

'On her way home from Londinium, where she is a student in the Humanities at Oxbridge University, Meghan stopped over on Sihnon where she went on a shopping spree under the guidance of her sister Alistair and professional stylist Kellie London. Already a fashion icon with her soft, feminine signature look, Meghan -'

"Skip to the social paragraphs. I've already seen this bit." the scroll blurred as it ran rapidly down then cleared.

'A regular social whirl has been scheduled for the new debutante, sponsored as she is by her adopted grandmother and aunt, Baroness Jolie Hampton and Paige Hampton Countess of Duryea, queens of Bellerophon and Londinium society. -'

"Note." Meghan sighed. "For the millionth time; that should be Jolie Hampton the Baroness Sexburgh and the Countess Duryea nee Paige Hampton. There is a right way and a wrong way to use titles. I prefer the right way if you please. And so do Jolie and Paige."

'Every hostess in the colony is eager to honor the latest Hampton princess with a tea or a reception or a dance.'

"God help me." Meghan said with feeling. "No, don't make a note of that either." She was, unfortunately, introverted by nature but a society hostess and power broker a'la Gran and Aunt Paige was necessary to their future plans and Alistair was far to forthright and short fused for the job. At least Meghan would eventually be able to share the burden with Seanna, who was already showing signs of becoming a talented social manager. Once she was established Meghan could be as exclusive as she liked but in the meantime it was necessary to meet and mix. It wouldn't be so bad here on Bellerophon where everybody had 'arrived' but the Londinium season with its annual hordes of aggressive climbers was going to be a hellish ordeal.

She quickly scanned the last paragraphs, consisting of speculative comparisons to Alistair's debut three years ago. "Fine, fine. Approved. Send." the scroll vanished as the text went winging back to the publicity office with her addendums.

Seanna Bracken studied her reflection in the full length mirror Unlike her sisters she didn't take after their mother; Meghan was the image of Mama with her dimpled oval face, brown curls, big blue eyes and delicate mouth. Alistair had the same coloring but was taller with a hint of Daddy's angularity in her chiseled features. Seanna on the other hand was all her father with the same strong cheekbones and chin, straight blond hair and steely gray-blue eyes. Not pretty, not pretty at all and she didn't care a wit - she was proud to look like Sam Bracken.

The dramatic asymmetrical clothes she preferred suited her long, rangy body and angular features but tended to overpower smaller, prettier girls. She was always trying to discourage her friends from imitating her style, without success. Like Meghan her look was fashionable, the cortex was full of images of girls wearing her clothing line most of them looking badly in it. Oh well it was their look out.

Tonight she was wearing a metal weave half-jacket over a navy sheath trimmed with glittery pink ribbon. Slits showed her legs above the knee high leather boots and her bare arm jingled with bangles. Her asymmetrical haircut was all swept to one side with a knot of metallic ribbon over the left ear. Seanna nodded satisfied. Jolie wouldn't like it of course, she just couldn't get it through her head that pretty, feminine clothes like Meghan's would look just awful on Seanna's very different figure.

Differences over dress aside Seanna liked her adopted grandmother and Jolie liked her recognizing a kindred soul. They both had a bit of the shark in them, more than a bit if Seanna was honest about it. Meghan was too inclined to empathize with others and Alistair had to be angry for her ruthless streak to surface. Seanna was the only one of the three who could go for the jugular, coolly, surgically, and without remorse - if sometimes a touch of regret. An unattractive trait perhaps but necessary for survival in a cutthroat 'Verse.

Jolie was just the same. She'd walked over bodies to build the Hampton empire and establish her children in their various niches. Paige was a society hostess and power broker like her Ma, Jolie's acknowledged heir. Introverted Wade managed the family's multi-various business enterprises and younger son Derrick had been groomed for political power. He'd been well launched for the secretary-generalship before the Unification movement had come along and relegated him to the political wilderness. But he still had his senatorship and his party so a comeback wasn't entirely beyond the reach of possibility. Mirielle, the baby and butterfly of the family, had gone into the entertainment field. Her beauty had made her a star and her money a mover and shaker among the dream-merchants who fed the Core-dwellers thirst for fantasy to brighten their safe, predictable lives.

Seanna liked most of her adopted relatives, the Disgusting Object being the sole exception - but not even his Ma liked him. she was looking forward to seeing Sissy and Mel; the Hampton Muskeeteers reunited except for their D'Artagnan - and Janni would be arriving any day now.

Hampton Court, Jolie's estate which she shared with Derrick and his family, was completely different from Little Rock. One of the biggest of the estates it consisted of a sprawling red-brick complex modeled on an Ancient Earth-That-Was palace of the same name set in formal gardens, carefully pruned orchards and wooded parkland with a broad, artificial river running through it.

Jolie met them on the water terrace overlooking the river, short of stature and on the plump side but with the most marvelous Snow-White coloring; alabaster skin, raven hair and rather chilly grey-blue eyes which narrowed at the sight of the Wade Hamptons. "Where's Briony?"

"Good question." Dianne answered biting off every word. "Off somewhere with Kirk, no clue where."

"Before Unification days?" Jolie's eyebrows and voice rose.

Dianne frowned, half wanting to defend her chick, half wanting to join Jolie in a gripe and grumble over Briony's misbehavior.

Aunt Oona, Derrick's golden haired and deceptively childlike wife, stepped quickly into the breech. "Perhaps they'll have an announcement for us when they come back."

That got startled looks of reassessment from the two other women. Both Jolie and Dianne agreed it was high time Briony picked herself a husband though for rather different reasons:

Jolie's aristocratic ethic required a 'good' marriage for the breeding of heirs, while Dianne's frontier mores made settling down and creating a family a duty of adulthood.

"It would be an excellent match." Jolie murmured, reflecting on Kirk's family and financial standing.

"They've been lovers long enough to be sure." said Dianne, equally thoughtfully.

Everybody else sighed, relieved a clash between Mother and Daughter in law had been successfully averted. Family get togethers were much more pleasant without Jolie and Dianne sniping at each other.

Melanie Hampton, Derrick and Oona's only daughter, was a leggy gamin with her father's raven hair and her mother's pretty face. She was also one of the few other girls who looked good in Seanna's style; she was wearing a long, transparent coat over a bare-midriff, one legged pantsuit in purple, fuschia and green. Her hair, longer than Seanna's, was streaked with vermilion and gathered into a side tail. Her lips were tinted muscat grape color and gold sequins outlined her eyes. The cousins gave each other the once over, approved, and started exchanging the latest gossip at a great rate.

Her brothers, Pat and Terry, as always gravitated to Meghan competing for her attention. Jolie, Dianne and Oona accepted cocktails from a footman in the red and white Hampton livery and put their heads together, talking weddings. Alistair wryly hoped Bree was planning to come back engaged or there'd be hell to pay, then headed for Uncle Derrick feeding the carp in an ornamental pool.

"I want to talk to you." she said bluntly. "It's important, political important not social important."

He looked a little sad, a little resigned. "I'm afraid I don't count for much in New Westminster these days."

"This might change that." Alistair took his arm, steering him away from the others and the hovering servants. Unlike Little Rock you couldn't move on Hampton Court without falling over footmen, butlers and housekeepers every other step.

"Regan Tam is one of my professors at the Law Acad, you may have heard of her."

He nodded. "Of course, the Tam-Thurley decision."

"That's her. She's got a daughter, River, not just ordinarily brilliant but a super-genius. When the kid was fourteen they were sent a prospectus from a school specializing in such children. A government funded school on Columbia."

Derrick blinked. "What?"

"Exactly. They'd never heard of the place either but River got all excited over it, wanted to go so they sent her. They haven't seen her since. There were letters of course, regular reports from faculty. Everything seemed fine so they didn't listen to River's brother Simon when he started saying something was wrong. Finally he got her out, kidnapped her."

"Good God!"

"That's not the problem. When Regan and her husband went to investigate in person they found evidence that the kids were being manipulated neuro-psychologically, experimented on."

Derrick sat down abruptly on a convenient bench. "You say she's got proof of this?"

Alistair nodded. "Captured interviews with some of River's friends and the results of their medical exams."

"I'll need to see it."

"I know. They'll be staying with friends at Andromeda Beach over Unification days. I'll invite them to lunch or something." her eyes narrowed a little. "You never heard anything about a program like this?"

"Not on kids." he took a deep breath. "Adults, service men and women who'd given informed consent. Even so the casualty rate was unacceptably high. We closed it down. I thought we'd closed it down." politician or no Derrick was a decent man - not to mention one of the few Core-dwellers who believed in Freedom over Security - suspicious as she was of all things government Alistair didn't doubt the genuiness of his distress for an instant. "I've got to talk to the Tams."

"You will." she promised.


End file.
